Useless

Useless

Every spring baby birds are pushed out of the nest by Mama and Papa Bird. Papa almost always takes a limb on a near-by tree, Mama on a patio chair. They chirp to each other, and encouragement to their off-spring, as they watch over the baby bird.

No matter what changes in the yard, this event takes place every year. For a couple years, an old stray cat hung around. Mama and Papa pushed the baby out, and more times than not, the cat ate it.

The cat went away, but the neighbor got a new dog who really had a taste for baby birds.

Last year, we cut two big trees down due to wind damage. I changed the furniture on the deck. Now Papa and Mama bird can’t be as close to the baby when it is pushed from the bird house.

You know what?

Despite the change in environment, despite the potential for almost certain death, they do it anyway.

They do it because a bird that can’t fly is worse than dead, it’s useless.

Pushing them from the nest when it’s much easier to just let them linger.

Probably the hardest thing today? Instilling in my boys a sense, a desire, a “soul-mandate” if you will, to be strong and self-sufficient.

It’s contrary to a growing ideology in this country that as Americans we’re “owed” something. Be it a good education, good grades, a nice house, healthcare.

I’ve blogged before about a tumultuous childhood and young adult life. Even as a child and immature adult, I recognized the difference between people who accepted life on its own terms and hustled to make it better; and those who saw the task, thought it too hard, and lay down.

Essentially, I saw successful flight and wing atrophy.

There were no role models for success in my life to emulate; not until I was well and grown in every way but the number.

When I was able, I carried a paper route for money. Then once I moved to Kentucky, started working fast food in high school.

No one ever told me I’d have to work for a living. As immature and socially inept as I may have been, I understood working was essential to any progress in life, to once-and-for-all autonomy. To flight.

I enlisted in the military at 17, right out of high school. Left for basic training carrying everything I owned in a single small duffel bag. Uncle Mike gave me $20 (which he made me pay back! lol), and that was all I had to my name.

I didn’t have money, possessions, maturity. I understood on an unconscious level this was my one shot out of poverty. Because let’s face it, once I left my Aunt’s house with nothing but $20, I didn’t exactly qualify as middle income. I had no skills, mediocre grades, no money (or grasp of how to get it) for college, and no family backing.

While Aunt Shelby and Uncle Mike graciously provided a place for me to live the last few years of high school. They were not my parents. I could not conceive of relying on them for anything after I turned 18. In my head, they sacrificed their way of life to take me in, and I was not an easy teenager. Not even close. Depending on them for anything was out of the question. I just couldn’t do it. And at the time, with all the personal emotional damage, wasn’t even sure they’d help me if I asked.

But I knew, in the observation of life and experience, it would take something sacrificial, a risk of jumping from the nest, to change the course. Sacrificial, and more than likely painful.

So I said good-bye to my friends, to my boy friend, to the only real home I’d ever known, and set out.

I was honored, even at 17, to serve my country. It was sacrificial to me personally in a couple ways. It was a totally foreign way of life. Never having learned to respect authority, or the most mundane, basic, unwritten “rules” in life, I was WAY behind the other women in just plain common sense. I didn’t have a mother to teach me by example, or instruction, how to be a girl. Now that may seem insignificant, but consider the games women play. I’d stumble into them, not knowing the protocol, make all kinds of enemies, and stumble out wondering what the heck happened. (Luckily for me, outside of basic training, my military experience was immersed in a mostly all male field, and later as a journalist, mostly male camera operators and producers.)

Last, it was sacrificial because for the first time in my life, I was solely responsible for the outcome. And wrong or bad decisions and behavior meant not only an end to my service, but automatic poverty. Period. Unlike most of my peers, I understood there was no where else for me to go. No family to catch me when I fell. I felt that responsibility like a weight around my neck. (Though it didn’t keep me from doing really stupid things and occasionally risking my career. Mostly due to that maturity thing I mentioned before.)

So why the background? All that, and I never once thought, “if I don’t make it I can get A,B, C from the government.” Not once. I knew there was no going back to the nest. And frankly, who’d want that?!

Even though my entire life up to that point was littered with people on the dole, playing the system, lying straight up to get a check…never occurred to me to do likewise. Probably because their lives sucked. All they could do is sit around, smoke cigarettes, and talk about things they’d never do, and how the gov. screws them over and OWES them.

No action or movement.

No flight.

Wing atrophy.

To my mind they were living in a kind of self-made jail, and living as good as they ever would.

Worse than dead, useless.

Most of the men I worked with in the military were go-getters. They didn’t say, "I can’t," they said, "HOW CAN I?" They didn’t say, "it’s too hard." They said, “It’s go time!”

It was in the military that my drive, the thing which differentiated me from my nuclear birth family, jelled. I realized the only limitations for me were personally set.

I had the feathers. I had the DNA. And I had life laid out before me like an endless topography of opportunity.

I flew.

Lots of bad choices in there, don’t mistake. Maturity and I were tenuous friends at best.

But, now I’m a parent.

Of boys.

I want them to fly. I know they will never be fully satisfied with life without it.

But as I prepare them to leave the nest, to fly, they’re being bombarded with a contradictory message.

“Hey, flying is ok if you’re into that. But really, not everyone can do it. And we don’t want any of the other birds to feel bad, or actually die from their choices. So if you decide to fly, you really should bring food back to them. We’re all birds after all. We have the same needs and deserve the same outcomes. Everyone needs to eat and be taken care of….”

It becomes increasing difficult to teach personal accountability when the government steps in. Like a baby bird pushed from the nest, the gov. is that well-intending human who scoops it up (because it MUST have fallen out, because no parent would do such a thing!) and puts the baby bird in a shoebox.

Where 9 times out of 10, it dies.

I see it coming, but I dread the day when America’s birds no longer risk death to leave the nest.

When our children become prisoners of government shoebox expectations.

So I could never take a dime from the government. How would I pay them back with more? taxes? There is not enough money in the world to make a dent. So since I cannot, I do not, nor ever will.

I don't like to say "never"....lol. It tempts fate to come clobber me on the nugget. Though I do agree with the premise, I realize we're all made in different ways. Some will ask for help, while others, not so much.

Rugged individualism was an American ideal from its founding, but somehow it turned to a bunch of whiny souls clinging to the officials elected in Government. Thats why so many people struggle so mightily in disasters like the one we are currently dealing with on the east coast. No one prepares for these things with lanterns, flashlights, batteries, gasoline, foods such as peanut butter and jelly, rice, pasta, and tons of stuff in cans and bottles. Right now even with the shortages of stuff I am so stocked up it would take 3 months for me to need anything. I guess being a "right wing nutjob" pays dividends sometimes.

Rugged individualism was an American ideal from its founding, but somehow it turned to a bunch of whiny souls clinging to the officials elected in Government. Thats why so many people struggle so mightily in disasters like the one we are currently dealing with on the east coast. No one prepares for these things with lanterns, flashlights, batteries, gasoline, foods such as peanut butter and jelly, rice, pasta, and tons of stuff in cans and bottles. Right now even with the shortages of stuff I am so stocked up it would take 3 months for me to need anything. I guess being a "right wing nutjob" pays dividends sometimes.

Omgoodness! My husband and I just had this conversation!

At first, the day after Sandy, reports of the devastation and how New Yorkers were handling it so well. Before the day was out, people fighting for gas, food. Crazy.

This is what happens when you pack millions of people one on top of the other. "This" being they become dependent on government for everything including transportation.

It's like people forget, because they are so insulated from it, how to survive on their own, be responsible for themselves.

I once read that cooking from scratch is becoming an "art" because fewer and fewer people can do it. People grow accustomed to eating out, and fast food. Given a few basic ingredients, they're at a loss. So they are fairly amazed at the "skill" of from-scratch cooking.

Survival can be like that for people who live in big cities imo. They get so used to everything being governed, ruled, dictated, they lose sight of how to do it for themselves.

When we lived in Alaska, I remember my first winter there. Realizing that if my vehicle went off the side of the road during a cold snap, I was solely responsible for my children's lives.

It was such an ALIEN feeling because in the lower 48 I could just generally call a tow truck or something.

Often times in Alaska, there was no phone signal, or even if there was, we were out in the tundra...it would take time for help to reach us. If I didn't prepare, keep heavy snow gear, candles, blankets, hydration, etc in the vehicle and we slid off the road...well, we'd freeze to death.

It happened to people every winter we lived up there....going out without emergency gear. Sliding off the road, freezing to death before help arrived. Some no more than half a mile from a house, or lodge.

This Sandy thing reminded me of that...how foreign it felt to be wholly responsible for the lives of my kids, knowing help wasn't coming. And while I didn't enjoy it, I'm grateful for the experience.

Well, in Alaska you need to be able to care for yourself because its a frontier. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, some people have been dealt really bad cards. Where I live on the Jersey Shore some people have been totally wiped out. The storm surges destroyed some homes and those people do need some help because they have suffered total loss. I feel pretty bad for the people who still have no power and those who have totally lost their homes and cars.

Well, in Alaska you need to be able to care for yourself because its a frontier. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, some people have been dealt really bad cards. Where I live on the Jersey Shore some people have been totally wiped out. The storm surges destroyed some homes and those people do need some help because they have suffered total loss. I feel pretty bad for the people who still have no power and those who have totally lost their homes and cars.

Yeah, Alaska is some parts modern, and other parts completely uncivilized...lol

Yes, I do think people should get some sort of help. Living on the shore, they should all have had insurance. Right? Obama told Fema to pay for everything.

Really?

Why is this any different than hurricanes that hit other parts of the country?

I hope the people relying on the gov are paying attention to how the liberal mayor of NY handles suffering. He gives the go ahead for a marathon, so hotels were asking people whose homes were destroyed to GET OUT...or just setting them out on the street.

That is the liberal ideology in a nutshell. To hell with common sense, let's use generators and man power on the arts or other unnecessary activities!

I'm not even there and feel very frustrated about how this entire thing was handled.

But I do think with a little self-planning, some of those without electricity could be self-sufficient right now. Like you.

Never is a tough choice. But what I found when I was laid off the first time (3 kids, less than $1k in the bank, and only 5 weeks severance) is there is always a way. I scrounged, got a part time job (nights mostly so it did not interfere with my job search) and scraped by for 4 months.

The second time, I was prepared, so while I got a job offer the day I was laid off, the offer was not valid for 3 months! Unfortunately, even though that was in the spring, it was a lousy spring weather wise! God wanted to make sure I did not get use to not working.